Community Market International Research Group

Markets have existed for many centuries across the globe as spaces of economic and social/cultural contact, exchange and innovation, occupying a variety of sites from streets, to town squares, to covered buildings, between railway tracks and other marginal plots of land. Diversity also characterises the commodities sold in markets, from wholesale markets to fresh produce markets, clothes markets, markets selling a plethora of different goods including household products, second hand and counterfeit goods, crafts, DVDs and mobile phones. Different markets are oriented towards different groups of consumers: the local neighbourhood, traders, and tourists, or some combination of these. In recent years there is an increasing interest in markets from academics and policy makers for their role as sites of sociality and connection, public space, social cohesion, heritage and economic innovation. Similarly there is a growing recognition that markets tap into a number of contemporary political and policy agendas, from the local to the national levels. For example, markets have a role to place in policies for urban regeneration, place making, healthy eating, sustainability, environmental impact, social and community cohesion, and economic innovation. As places of particular significance to new migrants and diverse ethnic groups, they also have a role to play in assisting migrants establishing themselves in a new city and providing opportunities for different communities to encounter one another in public space, thus mitigating inter- ethnic and racial conflict in the global city. We believe markets have the potential to provide a social and economic space in cities which to date has been relatively which has been little exploited and little explored.

Through an international range of research, this volume examines how informal urban street markets facilitate the informal and formal economy not merely in terms of the traditional concerns of labor and consumption, but also in regards to cultural and spatial contingencies. In many places, street markets and their populace have been marginalized and devalued. At times, there are clear governance procedures that aim to prevent them, yet they continue to emerge in even in the most institutionalized societies. This book gives serious consideration to what these markets reveal about urban life in a time of globalized, rapid urbanization and flows of people, knowledge and goods.